Mountain Folk
by SilverLocke980
Summary: Barret and Tifa reminisce on being children of mountains and come together while watching a fire burn. BarretTifa


Mountain Folk  
(Because I'm an Appalachian, ma'am! ;)

They realized they wanted each other the night they watched a fire burn without saying a word.

Barret has had a long, harsh life, where his first memories were of watching his father wash his skin with the waterhose outside so the coal dust wouldn't get into the house 'cause his momma would have beat him senseless had he tried. Barret's mother determined how he judges all women in his life- he likes them strong, tough, independent enough to not give a damn what the men in their lives want. It is one reason he has yet to kill Yuffie for all that she steals their materia from time to time (or that she painted her face in coal once to make fun of him)- he recognizes that independent trait in her, that her husband will be no yoke on her shoulders, and he approves of it. Hell, the entire people of Wutai have his approval. They may be short, with the exception of that one member of the Four Gods, but otherwise they are much like his people: rugged and independent.

Children of mountains.

Barret's life has been harsh, but he never dwells on that fact, would not even consider it. He believes too firmly in the basic good of all humankind, because his mountain town was a good place to grow up in (with a few bad apples, but that just meant Barret knew how to kick the crap out of somebody two years older than him by the time he was twelve). He also has strong memories of doing what's right, and all those other things Mama taught him out of her good Book, and so he stands here, in this town of surprisingly foul-smelling city people, unashamed and unafraid of whatever his future may hold.  
(He turned his lost hand into a gun because he thought it would be more useful that way- no tears over the lost hand, just glee over the gained gun. Better to smile than to sorrow.)

He keeps his anger, but that's because the sorrow is already burned out of him- mountain people have their tears but have them openly, let them out, cry their eyes out and then stand up, cleansed. He has never been able to be sad for long, though that one time Cloud almost bit it nearly did him in. Barret believes too much that he actually can do it, that destroying Shinra is something that's only a few years down the corner, if even that long, and so he does not cry.

Realizing that Tifa didn't cry either kind of cemented their relationship when they met- they became fast friends and good drinking buddies, reminiscing over crazy events of their pasts and laughing at things both of them understood (though the other members of their group- Wedge in particular- just stared at them when they joked about rusting trucks and angry horses and the difficulties involved in milking a goat). Barret has found his train and is riding the living hell out of it. Tifa is too.

He always liked that about her.

**&**

Tifa has had a life not as long but just as harsh; barely past her innocent childhood when her hometown began to burn, she'd been taken to the city by her teacher for healing when his Cure spells did not work.

She hated it upon first meeting. She hated the way it smelled; the way city folk would always dance around a problem instead of meeting it head on, too afraid of what the neighbors would say to bother tackling their problems and using it as an excuse to be lazy.  
(And city people stank; there was no other word for it, passing them on the street was like living in a sewer every day of her life.)

She longed for mountain ranges, and flower scents, and petals she could watch lazily drift down the river because she had felt like tossing them in. She wished for her mother back (and here she cries the few tears mountain people allow themselves- because kin is something different from anything else) and a chance to hear her yell from the doorway to come here, child, I got some work for you to do. And she'd give anything right now to go back there and hoe the garden.

She isn't really a mountain child, really a child of the valleys; but valleys are just dips in the mountain ranges where the mountains got tired (as Papa told her once in his big, laughing voice) and so are as much a part of mountains as their peaks. She loves her mountains, loves them in that stark, clear way any mountain person loves their mountains; they are home, nothing else is.  
(She hates city people for one more thing- that they move from place to place like each hotel, each apartment, was just another skin they were glad to be rid of. Tifa believes in rocks and roots and holding onto the place where you grew up, the very memory of the mountains that was old as time.)

So it was with the greatest pleasure she met Barret, who lived life like Tifa herself- never worrying about stupid little things that never mattered in the here and now. She loved being around Barret- he reminded her of home, was one of the only people in the city that never smelled (his dark skin vigorously washed until it shone an inky black each morning and each night) and she loved to talk about him. Stories about goats were her favorites, because the ornery beasts were the only things that could be raised in Nibelheim, and she'd milked goats many a time herself.  
(Much to her younger self's regret- goats were sensitive and far too likely to attack a young girl and her big hat for being rough with them down there.)

She has laughed herself hoarse sometimes with him, and though she knows about the bad things that have happened in Barret's past, he doesn't tell it like the others do- Vincent's half-whispered, pain choked voice, Cid's rasping smoker speech- he tells it like she does. It happened, it's in the past, there is no reason to dwell on it now.

Matter of fact. She liked that.

It wasn't for many years that she realized she liked even more.

**&**

Perhaps it was the fact that Cloud had run off yet again and mountain women are the proudest, strongest, and- most importantly in this situation- angriest women in the world. Perhaps it was because Barret was living alone with Marleen and, unlike Tifa, always seemed to have a smile on his face every day of the week.

Perhaps she'd simply grown tired of a man who, though born in mountains, had spent far too much time in the city to ever really smell clean again, at least to her nose.

So it was that they eventually came together- she and Barret- two people who had suffered so much more than anyone would know and yet soldiered on, since that's what mountain people do. They reached that conclusion the night they got together to get drunk again, because when liquored up it's hard not to tell how annoying you find Cloud's actions, and it's hard not to react when your drinking buddy tells you that you really ought to beat him over the head with your fists, Tif, where the hell's your fire, girl? She'd laughed and they'd quieted down.

The fire they'd built (if mountain people know only one thing, it's how to start a fire in the woods), slowly died down.

They watched it in silence.

That was when Tifa decided. What the hell. She'd spent half her life pining for a city fellow who would have ruined that moment by talking, who didn't want to sit around and watch a fire die, who didn't want to do anything, say, productive with his life rather than mumble around and moan. She didn't like that about Cloud, never had.  
(Playing housekeeper in his mind was really just a little too much.)

What would it be like to live with a fellow who wouldn't talk while a fire was dying down?

She'd turned to him and smiled. He'd just looked at her, wondering what mischief she had in mind (and praying, Lord above, don't let her set me on fire again like she did that one time in Midgar while drunk).

" What about your place tonight?" she'd asked, and Barret- who really hadn't given it much thought, but wouldn't mind it a damn bit if he had- threw his head back and laughed.

They left behind a fire that was dying, but somehow- if someone had been watching it- it still looked like it flickered with a smile of warmth.

-

Hope you like it! Dedicated to mountain folk like me everywhere.  
(And no, city folk don't stink!)

(Much!)


End file.
